Learning to Let Go — 6 Signs You Need It
On the path to being softer with yourself
Maybe you went through tough situations. Maybe all your recent relationships lead to heartbreaks. Maybe your childhood or youth has been a mess. Whatever the reason, you might one day find yourself trapped in over-control and find out that you totally locked your feelings for the last few years.
I’ve been here. In fact, I’m still working on it. But before working on it, you need to know if you are in this case or not. It’s not an easy situation to detect, as you’re so used to act this way.
Here are 6 signs showing that you need to learn to let go, and start being softer with yourself.
1. You feel overwhelmed by your emotions
It doesn’t happen frequently, but sometimes, you feel totally overwhelmed by sudden emotions. You suddenly feel your eyes filling with tears mid-sentence or get angry at a very tiny little thing someone did or say.
It might be the sign that you locked your emotions so much that they don’t get to flow naturally as they come. As a result, you accumulate them, for days, weeks or even months, and one day you change into a volcano.
2. You forbid yourself simple things
It can be going out for beers with friends. Or indulging in a Friday night pizza. Or buying yourself this book that you like.
You forbid yourself simple things, things that are part of human life and contribute to our happiness, and by doing so, you make yourself feel sad. You are conscious that you should not over-control all these things, especially if indulging in it makes you happy, but you can’t help.
Whether it’s about a diet, money or work, you simply can’t indulge in simple things, or if you do, you feel bad afterward.
3. You keep seeking for perfection
Often, this sign appears in your relationship with your body. Whether it’s seeking the perfect diet or the perfect fitness-training program, you only aim at perfection.
It can also manifest through work. You find yourself stuck in front of your laptop until the middle of the night, just because what you’re working on is not perfect yet.
Everything that is not perfect doesn’t seem good enough for you.
4. You see everything as a means to an end
If something isn’t part of a long-term process or is just made to be fun or pleasant, you don’t see the point in doing it. You feel like you’re losing your time or money in doing so. It can be watching a movie, joining a one-lesson cooking class, or whatever.
As far as I’m concerned, I felt this way with sport. I wasn’t interested in going for a run once in a while. What was the point, as I would not see any result unless I fully got into it on a regular basis?
In fact, you don’t allow yourself to do something just for fun.
5. You think that everything must be deserved
Getting something “for free” isn’t something that you can consider. Whether it’s having a fun night out, going on a vacation, or having this much-needed nap, you have to deserve it. You can’t just have it for free, without having done hard-work before.
6. Doing nothing makes you feel bad
Same thing with the feeling that you didn’t do enough in your day. Your to-do list is very long, and you’ll feel satisfied only when you’ll get totally exhausted at the end of the day.
Spending a whole day doing nothing is unthinkable, and would make you feel extremely bad.
Every hour of your day must be employed in a productive way. Optimized. If not, you feel like this time is wasted.
Being a control-freak can have multiple origins. Science says that if people act like that, it’s because of society preaching perfection. The global message of our era is that you must be perfect in all areas: work, body, relationships, studies… You need to do sport regularly, eat healthily, dress well, have a beautiful house, go on holiday in faraway places, and so on.
You might feel like controlling every aspect of your life is what will lead you to success and happiness. In fact, it’s not. It’s the best way to missing out on your life. Because beauty and poetry happen in the unexpected.
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